Film DVD Reviews www.list.co.uk/film
SHORT FILM PARIS VU PAR (15) 95min (Artificial Eye) ●●●●● Long overdue reissue of 1964 portmanteau film featuring the youthful efforts of some of the French New Wave’s finest. The idea was to invite six directors to contribute a short film named after and set in a particular part of the French capital. Jean- Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer, Jean Rouch, Jean-
Daniel Pollet and Jean Douchet took up the challenge, with very fascinating results. Godard headed for the
CHRISTMAS PLAYLIST
Montparnasse-Levallois and made a romantic farce of telegrams and infidelity. Chabrol and his real-life wife Stéphane Audran play a bickering couple whose son takes drastic steps to silence them. Rohmer delivers up a suspenseful tale of fashion and fear at Place de l’Étoile. Rouch’s short, a single take study of a woman moving from an argument with her boyfriend to a casual
liaison at Gare du Nord remains the pick of the bunch by virtue of technical ingenuity while Pollet and Dochet detail the travails of young women, one a prostitute one an American student. Rarely screened and hiding many burgeoning talents (Nestor Almendros and direct cinema pioneer Albert Maysles shot two of the films), Paris Vu Par is a treat. Minimal extras. (Paul Dale) THRILLER GANGSTER STORY (PG) 65min (Brightspark) ●●●●●
Walter Matthau had a handful of supporting roles under his belt (Bigger Than Life, A Face in the Crowd, King Creole) when he directed himself in this 1959 low-budget crime movie. But Matthau had yet to develop his trademark curmudgeon screen persona and the rather pedestrian material he was working from certainly could have benefited from it. Foreshadowing his tough turn in Charlie Varrick, Matthau plays a cop killer on the run from the law who hides out in a small town where he engineers a bank robbery that enrages the local crime boss. Shot for a measly $75,000 with a five-man non-union crew in Anaheim, California, Matthau, who thought the script was so awful he had to rewrite it every day, looks like he’s struggling with the twin responsibilities, which is possibly why he never got behind the camera again. Nevertheless, the film ended up taking more at the box office than the big budget Gary Cooper-Charlton Heston vehicle, The Wreck of the Mary Deare. No extras. (Miles Fielder)
Alastair Sim as Scrooge
A quick look at your advent calendar will confirm the coming of the annual festival we know as Christmas, and what better way to celebrate than to gather the whole family around Ye Olde Computer Screen to enjoy a selection of online clips to fuel the festive urge?
Not in the mood? Humbug. Let’s start in a minor key, with Jon Voight playing an amalgam of Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal called Peter Miller in the 1974 version of The Odessa File (tinyurl.com/22jdc5). Driving through the snowy streets, there’s not much spirit in evidence for the heavy- hearted Miller, despite the tuneful serenading of Perry Como and his Christmas Dream on the soundtrack. If you’re feeling just as miserable this year, don’t despair . . .
So let’s effect your miraculous conversion from cruel curmudgeon to close compadre of all with the complete 1951 version of Scrooge, with the late, great Alastair Sim (tinyurl.com/8yywvn). OK, so maybe it’s not in 3D or IMAX in the way that the new-fangled Jim Carrey/Robert Zemeckis version is, but there’s simply no denying that Charles Dickens works better when acted out by real people rather than computer-generated zombies. Just as good is the 1971 animation A Christmas Carol made by animator Richard Williams, whose 25-minute long version of the story (tinyurl.com/y9uymo5) features Sim, again, as another fearsomely good Ebenezer.
Feeling more jolly about the season now? Then let’s deck the halls with another joyous miser, this time played by Albert Finney in the 1970 version of Scrooge. Clearly the forerunner of Monty Python’s ‘Every Sperm is Sacred’ musical number from The Meaning of Life, this clip features Finney and Anton Rodgers, the latter looking uncannily like David Cameron, leading a group of Victorian street-urchins through the streets of London singing Leslie Bricusse’s infectious song of gratitude for the act of gratitude itself, ‘Thank You Very Much’ (tinyurl.com/ycveam2).
Available in two versions, with and without Finney as a dancing Santa (tinyurl.com/ycc6ny5), the story of Scrooge is enough to make you prance down the street, stopping only to spontaneously purchase a huge gobbling turkey for the next poverty-stricken child that crosses your path. So settle down by your roaring fire, gather your loved ones around, and let the Christmas dreams commence . . . (tinyurl.com/2ubb25) (Eddie Harrison)
62 THE LIST 3–17 Dec 2009
WESTERN THE LAST THAKUR (15) 83min (Artificial Eye) ●●●●●
This Bangladeshi Western directed by British filmmaker Sadik Ahmed is a clumsily realised tale of Oedipal tensions. The film focuses on Kala, a young man visiting a small town determined to find out who raped his mother. Was it the charismatic Chairman, proclaimed defender of the people, or was it Thakur, the Hindu landlord busy gobbling up local land on unpaid loans? There are mythic overtones in Ahmed's film, but an almost complete absence of sub-text. In both formal and dramatic terms Ahmed offers the heavy- handed. When the chairman decides to split with the mistress, we get over-emphatic close-ups and equally explanatory dialogue. The film may indicate a timeless quality in its story, but the form of its telling indicates a very contemporary patronage of the audience's intelligence. Extras include short documentary. (Tony McKibbin) HORROR SCARED TO DEATH (U) 65min (Network) ●●●●
This B-movie chiller from 1947 is chiefly distinguished for being the only colour film to star Bela Lugosi (he appeared but did not star in the 1930 Technicolor film
Viennese Nights). Lugosi was long into his poverty row years at this point in his career, so Scared to Death hardly ranks with his glory days as Universal’s horror star. Still, keeping fang firmly in cheek, there’s much to be savoured in this old dark house style mystery. In it, a dead woman recounts the bizarre tale of how she arrived on a slab in the morgue through a maze of murder involving a hypnotist (Lugosi, of course), a sinister doctor (horror cohort George Zucco), a midget and a mysterious figure in a blue mask. The deliciously hammy dialogue alone is worth watching the film for: ‘Pardon me, Professor, but didn’t I just see you outside baying at the moon?’ No extras. (Miles Fielder) SHORT FILM BETTY’S BATH AND OTHER STORIES (18) 36min (Film First) ●●●●●
If you like your erotica antiquated and a little bit naughty then this collection of eight short, silent black and white films shot in Hollywood in the early 1920s may be of archival (or other) interest. Filmed by some couch surfing studio exec these voyeuristic little films were undoubtedly filmed in a spirit of exploitation but by today’s standard they seem jolly innocent with lovely naked ladies running around on the beach, hiding in caves and dressing up for revue. Bizarrely these films were found next to an unexploded hand grenade in an air raid shelter in West Hampstead. Most importantly 20% of the profits on the sale of this DVD will be donated to Cancer Research. Minimal extras. (Paul Dale)